hi everyone if you would if you are able
we would love to start with some
movement so if you can please stand and
we’re gonna start with a prompt where I
ask you to conduct an imaginary
orchestra so perhaps you are leading in
the string section followed by the wind
instruments and you are creating a
symphony of beautiful sound excellent
now change it up and conduct traffic at
a busy intersection different quality of
movement in your body notice how it
feels differently perhaps than the
orchestra now the fun part is let’s do
them both at the same time good all
right rest your arms down at your side
now if you would let’s just isolate the
head and neck we’re gonna do a head and
neck dance waking up the muscles of the
neck the head and neck are the only part
of the body where you can be expressive
so make good choices and now as you’re
moving your head and neck start to take
in the room and know it’s a little dark
start to say the things that you see as
you see them stripes
chandelier areas duct tape Wake Forest
t-shirt like exit sign exit sign windows
X red black triangles 100 masses good
that’s enough of that
excellent now everybody make with your
body an angular shape and now change it
up make a circular shape go back to the
angular shape find a different pathway
to travel from this angular shape to
excellent congratulations you all just
did improvisational movement and now let
me ask you do you think if you were to
regularly practice improvisational
movements like that do you think that it
could change your body or your mind we
do we christina’s are a professor of
dance and choreographer at Wake Forest
University and a neuroscientist at the
Wake Forest School of Medicine our work
together is a shared inquiry into the
artistic and scientific effects that you
can see of improvisational movement on
people’s bodies and minds so as a
choreographer and a dance artist I’ve
become intrigued with and devoted to
improvisational movement as a practice
that can foster agency especially for
older adults in a busy world that is
full of change change is the only
constant in our lives so as we age I
believe we need to practice moving more
than ever
dancing with older adults has taught me
that we need to constantly be practicing
change and the dance studio is a great
place to do this so today we want to
talk about movement improvisation as a
life skill as well as improvisational
movement as something we can do
regularly in our lives and in our case
it has been something that has inspired
an unlikely partnership what I’m going
to show you now are some images from a
community class that I’ve been teaching
for six years here in winston-salem at
the Academy of Dance Arts in
winston-salem and it is a class that we
can offer free of charge and the studio
gives us the space for free these
participants some are living with
Parkinson’s some are caregivers some are
older adults who come to take the class
and they’re waiting for me to share a
series of rapidly delivered prompts much
like the ones that you practiced so in
these prompts each each prompt elicits
us
see of spontaneous different responses
every movement is self generated by the
individual at the level and skill and
ability in which they can respond every
choice therefore is the right one and we
practice multitasking and
problem-solving in the dance studio in
safe and effective ways later in class
we change the space up this is
intentional we’re trying to create an
environment that is chaotic and
disheveled much like the world that we
live and navigate through every day so
by doing this we’re practicing agency we
are in this moment doing a prompt called
walk pause and just like it sounds the
act is to walk in the space and pause in
the space on your own with your own
agency and with your own moment of this
is mine so I’ve been really fortunate
because in addition to this community
class I’ve been able to be a part of
several different pilot studies that
study in a scientific way what is it
that’s happening when an improvisational
dance intervention happens in a
different community so one of our
studies with the translational Science
Center here at wake looked at people
living with Parkinson’s and their
caregivers and on the left you see a
participant who’s tasked before the
study began with this the ability to
just stand out of a chair and raise her
arms and on the right you see her
purchasing this act after seven weeks of
improvisational movement together you
can see it’s pretty profound the
difference in getting in and out of the
chair something that so many of us
probably take for granted this
participant also in the same study
living with Parkinson’s the tasks before
and after the study show significant
change as well crossing the midline of
the body again an easy skill perhaps but
one that becomes more complicated as we
age and you see that the range of motion
in this action has has increased as well
as the fluidity that she’s able to do it
I also loved her ability to take her
head with her on the
she’s falling off of her axis she
doesn’t need to see where she’s going
she is physically confident in that
moment that to me is so inspiring so
these videos are really what started our
collaboration together I saw them at a
presentation sponsored by the Wake
Forest translational Science Center as a
neuroscientist they really caught my
attention so part of my work looks at
how things like aerobic exercise that
you might normally do affects the brain
and older adults but what Christina was
doing was totally different nobody’s
walking on a treadmill there are no
repetitive movements in fact it’s
deliberately non repetitive and yet
people are getting real benefits in
standing walking and balancing on top of
that um on top of that what she’s doing
is in people with active neuro
degeneration right so they’re going
through this process and they’re still
having these benefits and not only that
but she’s not even giving them feedback
on their movements so they’re doing all
these different things she’s not telling
them if it’s correct or not and yet
they’re still getting benefit so it
seemed to me that this is thinking about
moving in a very different way than I
was used to thinking about it and it was
interesting to me to think about how
that might be changing people’s brains
also as a human I could see that
christina was changing people as a
neuroscientist I believe that if we can
see that change we can measure it and
now I’m going to tell you a little bit
about our scientific work together which
really is just beginning so Christina
mentioned to you that the videos that
you saw before were part of a pilot
research study that she did with dr.
Glenda batson at winston-salem State
University and people with Parkinson
disease so we’ve now taken this work and
translated it into a community of people
with early stage memory loss that may
not seem intuitive to you but you may
not know that the same neural pathology
that affects memory can also affect
people’s mood and balance and gait and
that are taken care of in other regions
of their brain as well so we really
thought that what christina was doing
might help ameliorate some of these
secondary symptoms of memory loss in
addition we think that improvisation
might be a uniquely good fit for
with memory loss because as you saw it
doesn’t necessarily rely so much on
memory so you know maybe you don’t
remember how to get from your angular
shape back into your circular shape
right but it’s okay because you’re gonna
move right on to the next prompt and
every choice you make is the right
choice so there’s no judgement there are
no wrong choices and some of these core
principles of improvisation like having
no judgment are really important when
you’re undergoing a neurodegenerative
process that’s out of your control
I also think it’s really important in
Cristina’s work that she includes
caregivers and care partners so the
process of memory loss are really any
neurodegenerative disease can be very
dehumanizing but this class an
improvisational movement creates a
really democratic playing field for
people coming in and now I’m going to
walk you through some of our ideas about
how improvisational movement may be
changing people’s bodies and minds when
they’re undergoing early stages of
memory loss and I’m going to do it using
a diagram that uses data from our pilot
study so Cristina’s class obviously has
a movement component and you all
participated in part of that and what we
saw in our pilot was that that movement
resulted in improved balance and that
improved balance went along with
increased connectivity and so madam
ohter brain regions that are important
for movement and we were able to measure
that Cristina’s class is also highly
social and you all kind of experienced
that as well there was a lot of giggling
there was a lot of looks of disbelief
there was a lot of looking at your
neighbor like are we really doing this
um and that social engagement is really
powerful and in fact the largest the
largest support group for Parkinson
disease in our community came out of
Cristina’s class because of this deep
social engagement that arises and our
pilot study we saw that people’s
symptoms of depression and mood improved
and their apathy decreased and this went
along with increased connectivity and
brain networks that are important social
engagement another piece of data that I
don’t have Illustrated for you that but
we thought was intriguing was that when
we asked people in Cristina’s community
class about different things that were
changing one unexpected thing they
reported was a hundred percent of them
said that their empathy for other people
increased
so because of this and the pilot study
we included a mindfulness questionnaire
and that was one of the most reliable
increases we saw before and after her
intervention so we feel that all these
changes combined come together to
improve quality of life both with the
person experiencing memory loss and
their care partner there are a couple
other important points that I want to
mention one is that we’re not suggesting
that this intervention is curing disease
right you still have Parkinson disease
you still have memory loss and those
diseases are going to continue to
progress but this may be a really
important way engaging in an arts
practice may be a really important way
to help you live with those diseases and
live with the experiences that you’re
having another quick point I’d like to
make is that it is very tempting when
you see beautiful brain images like this
to get caught up in the idea of this is
the brain part of the brain that’s
changing with improvisation or the part
of the brain that’s improving but what I
really want you to walk away with is
that these brain images are one lens
through which you can see the benefits
of an arts practice incorporated and
regularly into your life so as a
choreographer and teacher working with
older adults in the dance studio is
similar to the ways that I work with my
undergraduate students the same guiding
principles of trying to instill a
regular arts practice in your life are
there and while I’m grateful that the
class has yielded some therapeutic
benefits
I’m not calling what I do dance therapy
so what is it then what are we
practicing in the dance studio
I think we’re practicing how to be human
beings movement is a human condition it
is both an art and a science
and this should fascinate all of us so
ultimately I have a deep appreciation
now for art and science together and in
our case dance and neuroscience
most importantly though I think the
message is about unlikely partnerships
and that we need to make space and room
for them in our lives so throughout our
process together of writing grants
publishing in journals going to arts and
science conferences together I’m
grateful for the way a neuroscientist
has taught me so much about art and I’m
grateful for the ways that Chris
my experiences with Christina have
informed my life both personally and
professionally so on a personal note our
family’s one of our family’s New Year’s
resolutions last year was to attend a
live performance every month and I’m
proud to say that we did it and I would
say in the works fear one of the most
important things that I continue to
learn from our collaboration is that
it’s important as a scientist to try to
measure the unmeasurable and not be
afraid of that so when I think about the
work that I’ve had over the past three
years and I think about how different it
would be if I had been unwilling to have
this conversation with Christina because
how in the world are you going to make a
scientific protocol out of
improvisational movement or even if you
did who’s going to find you to do that
work but just the willingness to be in
that space and have that conversation
and try to measure something but I would
still say is unmeasurable it has really
pushed our work and our thinking and our
understanding forward so we often think
and reference MacArthur award-winning
genius choreographer Liz Lerman in our
work she’s written a really wonderful
book called hiking the horizontal where
she challenges us to look at the
hierarchies that we create within the
systems that we operate in we tend to
privilege one over another so for
instance you might be sitting here
thinking that the science is more
important in this conversation or maybe
you’re thinking no it’s about the art
well for us these things have to live on
a horizontal playing field and we treat
them as equal players or perhaps you’re
looking at us as professors or as
idealistic scholars and that this work
exists separate from the community but
again we work together and work
horizontally hiking this terrain
together so this willingness that we’ve
had to meet each other
hiking all horizontal has changed the
landscape of our work it’s opened new
paths to engage more deeply in our
separate work and also extend our shared
work so I’m delighted that we’re working
towards trademarking the name
improvement as an improvisational
movement curriculum that can be further
disseminated and developed and we have a
website for that as
already mentioned we’ve completed a
couple of different pilot studies funded
through the translational Science Center
and through the Blue Cross Blue Shield
wellness initiative here at Wake Forest
and we’re currently recruiting
recruiting the first wave of
participants for our randomized
controlled trial funded by the NIH to
test Christina’s method as a
choreographer we work now
intergenerationally I am delighted to
bring dancers as young as age five or as
young as age 86 into the studio together
we’re collaboratively dance making takes
place our scientific team has started
working with senior services in our
community to look at investigating a
beautiful program that’s going on at the
tab Williams Adult Day Center of
intergenerational kinder music or also
with Senior Services we’re working on an
app so that our most vulnerable
homebound older adults can have access
to movement like this and a certified
nursing assistant or another home health
aide professional can be with them in
their living room or in their kitchen
going through these kinds of prompts
together also May 3rd and 4th this year
will be the third time that Wake Forest
Co sponsors the aging VMO aging
reimagine symposium so this is a
multidisciplinary aging symposium where
we bring in thought leaders
international thought leaders in the
world of aging from many different
disciplines and we co organize this with
our colleague Danny Kim Shapiro and what
really got this started was the
wonderful interactions that we’ve had
and the way that the shared
understanding has pushed our work we
wanted that to be available to our
colleagues and to the community so this
is an event that people in the community
also can attend similarly people in the
county can take lifelong learning
classes at Wake Forest University
including our improvement classes all of
this and we know there’s so much more
ahead of us that is yet unknown so
science and art may seem disparate but
making space for unlikely partnerships
has helped us see commonality we are
both engaged in rigorous modes of
inquiry and we are informed by each
other’s understandings so one of my
favorite examples of this is falling
this is how we see falling in geriatric
medicine it’s a vulnerable older adults
it’s a dangerous situation and in fact
we define falling very clinically it’s
defined as coming to rest
unintentionally on the ground or a lower
surface and in dance that’s not at all
how we see falling we think falling is
beautiful it’s something we practice
it’s a choreographic choice it’s a skill
falling is walking falling is shifting
your weight it has meaning it’s
beautiful I love hearing Christina talk
about falling as redefining your
relationship with the ground so she
tells students in her community class
that falling is going to happen but
what’s more important than that is can
you become comfortable on the ground
maybe you can even begin thinking of new
ways to get back on your feet
but improvisation can help us to see
that there can be a multiplicity of
responses and not one single
predetermined outcome so what if we were
taught this were advice that we all took
what if we said it’s time for us all to
begin redefining our relationship with the ground
we would love to start with some
movement so if you can please stand and
we’re gonna start with a prompt where I
ask you to conduct an imaginary
orchestra so perhaps you are leading in
the string section followed by the wind
instruments and you are creating a
symphony of beautiful sound excellent
now change it up and conduct traffic at
a busy intersection different quality of
movement in your body notice how it
feels differently perhaps than the
orchestra now the fun part is let’s do
them both at the same time good all
right rest your arms down at your side
now if you would let’s just isolate the
head and neck we’re gonna do a head and
neck dance waking up the muscles of the
neck the head and neck are the only part
of the body where you can be expressive
so make good choices and now as you’re
moving your head and neck start to take
in the room and know it’s a little dark
start to say the things that you see as
you see them stripes
chandelier areas duct tape Wake Forest
t-shirt like exit sign exit sign windows
X red black triangles 100 masses good
that’s enough of that
excellent now everybody make with your
body an angular shape and now change it
up make a circular shape go back to the
angular shape find a different pathway
to travel from this angular shape to
excellent congratulations you all just
did improvisational movement and now let
me ask you do you think if you were to
regularly practice improvisational
movements like that do you think that it
could change your body or your mind we
do we christina’s are a professor of
dance and choreographer at Wake Forest
University and a neuroscientist at the
Wake Forest School of Medicine our work
together is a shared inquiry into the
artistic and scientific effects that you
can see of improvisational movement on
people’s bodies and minds so as a
choreographer and a dance artist I’ve
become intrigued with and devoted to
improvisational movement as a practice
that can foster agency especially for
older adults in a busy world that is
full of change change is the only
constant in our lives so as we age I
believe we need to practice moving more
than ever
dancing with older adults has taught me
that we need to constantly be practicing
change and the dance studio is a great
place to do this so today we want to
talk about movement improvisation as a
life skill as well as improvisational
movement as something we can do
regularly in our lives and in our case
it has been something that has inspired
an unlikely partnership what I’m going
to show you now are some images from a
community class that I’ve been teaching
for six years here in winston-salem at
the Academy of Dance Arts in
winston-salem and it is a class that we
can offer free of charge and the studio
gives us the space for free these
participants some are living with
Parkinson’s some are caregivers some are
older adults who come to take the class
and they’re waiting for me to share a
series of rapidly delivered prompts much
like the ones that you practiced so in
these prompts each each prompt elicits
us
see of spontaneous different responses
every movement is self generated by the
individual at the level and skill and
ability in which they can respond every
choice therefore is the right one and we
practice multitasking and
problem-solving in the dance studio in
safe and effective ways later in class
we change the space up this is
intentional we’re trying to create an
environment that is chaotic and
disheveled much like the world that we
live and navigate through every day so
by doing this we’re practicing agency we
are in this moment doing a prompt called
walk pause and just like it sounds the
act is to walk in the space and pause in
the space on your own with your own
agency and with your own moment of this
is mine so I’ve been really fortunate
because in addition to this community
class I’ve been able to be a part of
several different pilot studies that
study in a scientific way what is it
that’s happening when an improvisational
dance intervention happens in a
different community so one of our
studies with the translational Science
Center here at wake looked at people
living with Parkinson’s and their
caregivers and on the left you see a
participant who’s tasked before the
study began with this the ability to
just stand out of a chair and raise her
arms and on the right you see her
purchasing this act after seven weeks of
improvisational movement together you
can see it’s pretty profound the
difference in getting in and out of the
chair something that so many of us
probably take for granted this
participant also in the same study
living with Parkinson’s the tasks before
and after the study show significant
change as well crossing the midline of
the body again an easy skill perhaps but
one that becomes more complicated as we
age and you see that the range of motion
in this action has has increased as well
as the fluidity that she’s able to do it
I also loved her ability to take her
head with her on the
she’s falling off of her axis she
doesn’t need to see where she’s going
she is physically confident in that
moment that to me is so inspiring so
these videos are really what started our
collaboration together I saw them at a
presentation sponsored by the Wake
Forest translational Science Center as a
neuroscientist they really caught my
attention so part of my work looks at
how things like aerobic exercise that
you might normally do affects the brain
and older adults but what Christina was
doing was totally different nobody’s
walking on a treadmill there are no
repetitive movements in fact it’s
deliberately non repetitive and yet
people are getting real benefits in
standing walking and balancing on top of
that um on top of that what she’s doing
is in people with active neuro
degeneration right so they’re going
through this process and they’re still
having these benefits and not only that
but she’s not even giving them feedback
on their movements so they’re doing all
these different things she’s not telling
them if it’s correct or not and yet
they’re still getting benefit so it
seemed to me that this is thinking about
moving in a very different way than I
was used to thinking about it and it was
interesting to me to think about how
that might be changing people’s brains
also as a human I could see that
christina was changing people as a
neuroscientist I believe that if we can
see that change we can measure it and
now I’m going to tell you a little bit
about our scientific work together which
really is just beginning so Christina
mentioned to you that the videos that
you saw before were part of a pilot
research study that she did with dr.
Glenda batson at winston-salem State
University and people with Parkinson
disease so we’ve now taken this work and
translated it into a community of people
with early stage memory loss that may
not seem intuitive to you but you may
not know that the same neural pathology
that affects memory can also affect
people’s mood and balance and gait and
that are taken care of in other regions
of their brain as well so we really
thought that what christina was doing
might help ameliorate some of these
secondary symptoms of memory loss in
addition we think that improvisation
might be a uniquely good fit for
with memory loss because as you saw it
doesn’t necessarily rely so much on
memory so you know maybe you don’t
remember how to get from your angular
shape back into your circular shape
right but it’s okay because you’re gonna
move right on to the next prompt and
every choice you make is the right
choice so there’s no judgement there are
no wrong choices and some of these core
principles of improvisation like having
no judgment are really important when
you’re undergoing a neurodegenerative
process that’s out of your control
I also think it’s really important in
Cristina’s work that she includes
caregivers and care partners so the
process of memory loss are really any
neurodegenerative disease can be very
dehumanizing but this class an
improvisational movement creates a
really democratic playing field for
people coming in and now I’m going to
walk you through some of our ideas about
how improvisational movement may be
changing people’s bodies and minds when
they’re undergoing early stages of
memory loss and I’m going to do it using
a diagram that uses data from our pilot
study so Cristina’s class obviously has
a movement component and you all
participated in part of that and what we
saw in our pilot was that that movement
resulted in improved balance and that
improved balance went along with
increased connectivity and so madam
ohter brain regions that are important
for movement and we were able to measure
that Cristina’s class is also highly
social and you all kind of experienced
that as well there was a lot of giggling
there was a lot of looks of disbelief
there was a lot of looking at your
neighbor like are we really doing this
um and that social engagement is really
powerful and in fact the largest the
largest support group for Parkinson
disease in our community came out of
Cristina’s class because of this deep
social engagement that arises and our
pilot study we saw that people’s
symptoms of depression and mood improved
and their apathy decreased and this went
along with increased connectivity and
brain networks that are important social
engagement another piece of data that I
don’t have Illustrated for you that but
we thought was intriguing was that when
we asked people in Cristina’s community
class about different things that were
changing one unexpected thing they
reported was a hundred percent of them
said that their empathy for other people
increased
so because of this and the pilot study
we included a mindfulness questionnaire
and that was one of the most reliable
increases we saw before and after her
intervention so we feel that all these
changes combined come together to
improve quality of life both with the
person experiencing memory loss and
their care partner there are a couple
other important points that I want to
mention one is that we’re not suggesting
that this intervention is curing disease
right you still have Parkinson disease
you still have memory loss and those
diseases are going to continue to
progress but this may be a really
important way engaging in an arts
practice may be a really important way
to help you live with those diseases and
live with the experiences that you’re
having another quick point I’d like to
make is that it is very tempting when
you see beautiful brain images like this
to get caught up in the idea of this is
the brain part of the brain that’s
changing with improvisation or the part
of the brain that’s improving but what I
really want you to walk away with is
that these brain images are one lens
through which you can see the benefits
of an arts practice incorporated and
regularly into your life so as a
choreographer and teacher working with
older adults in the dance studio is
similar to the ways that I work with my
undergraduate students the same guiding
principles of trying to instill a
regular arts practice in your life are
there and while I’m grateful that the
class has yielded some therapeutic
benefits
I’m not calling what I do dance therapy
so what is it then what are we
practicing in the dance studio
I think we’re practicing how to be human
beings movement is a human condition it
is both an art and a science
and this should fascinate all of us so
ultimately I have a deep appreciation
now for art and science together and in
our case dance and neuroscience
most importantly though I think the
message is about unlikely partnerships
and that we need to make space and room
for them in our lives so throughout our
process together of writing grants
publishing in journals going to arts and
science conferences together I’m
grateful for the way a neuroscientist
has taught me so much about art and I’m
grateful for the ways that Chris
my experiences with Christina have
informed my life both personally and
professionally so on a personal note our
family’s one of our family’s New Year’s
resolutions last year was to attend a
live performance every month and I’m
proud to say that we did it and I would
say in the works fear one of the most
important things that I continue to
learn from our collaboration is that
it’s important as a scientist to try to
measure the unmeasurable and not be
afraid of that so when I think about the
work that I’ve had over the past three
years and I think about how different it
would be if I had been unwilling to have
this conversation with Christina because
how in the world are you going to make a
scientific protocol out of
improvisational movement or even if you
did who’s going to find you to do that
work but just the willingness to be in
that space and have that conversation
and try to measure something but I would
still say is unmeasurable it has really
pushed our work and our thinking and our
understanding forward so we often think
and reference MacArthur award-winning
genius choreographer Liz Lerman in our
work she’s written a really wonderful
book called hiking the horizontal where
she challenges us to look at the
hierarchies that we create within the
systems that we operate in we tend to
privilege one over another so for
instance you might be sitting here
thinking that the science is more
important in this conversation or maybe
you’re thinking no it’s about the art
well for us these things have to live on
a horizontal playing field and we treat
them as equal players or perhaps you’re
looking at us as professors or as
idealistic scholars and that this work
exists separate from the community but
again we work together and work
horizontally hiking this terrain
together so this willingness that we’ve
had to meet each other
hiking all horizontal has changed the
landscape of our work it’s opened new
paths to engage more deeply in our
separate work and also extend our shared
work so I’m delighted that we’re working
towards trademarking the name
improvement as an improvisational
movement curriculum that can be further
disseminated and developed and we have a
website for that as
already mentioned we’ve completed a
couple of different pilot studies funded
through the translational Science Center
and through the Blue Cross Blue Shield
wellness initiative here at Wake Forest
and we’re currently recruiting
recruiting the first wave of
participants for our randomized
controlled trial funded by the NIH to
test Christina’s method as a
choreographer we work now
intergenerationally I am delighted to
bring dancers as young as age five or as
young as age 86 into the studio together
we’re collaboratively dance making takes
place our scientific team has started
working with senior services in our
community to look at investigating a
beautiful program that’s going on at the
tab Williams Adult Day Center of
intergenerational kinder music or also
with Senior Services we’re working on an
app so that our most vulnerable
homebound older adults can have access
to movement like this and a certified
nursing assistant or another home health
aide professional can be with them in
their living room or in their kitchen
going through these kinds of prompts
together also May 3rd and 4th this year
will be the third time that Wake Forest
Co sponsors the aging VMO aging
reimagine symposium so this is a
multidisciplinary aging symposium where
we bring in thought leaders
international thought leaders in the
world of aging from many different
disciplines and we co organize this with
our colleague Danny Kim Shapiro and what
really got this started was the
wonderful interactions that we’ve had
and the way that the shared
understanding has pushed our work we
wanted that to be available to our
colleagues and to the community so this
is an event that people in the community
also can attend similarly people in the
county can take lifelong learning
classes at Wake Forest University
including our improvement classes all of
this and we know there’s so much more
ahead of us that is yet unknown so
science and art may seem disparate but
making space for unlikely partnerships
has helped us see commonality we are
both engaged in rigorous modes of
inquiry and we are informed by each
other’s understandings so one of my
favorite examples of this is falling
this is how we see falling in geriatric
medicine it’s a vulnerable older adults
it’s a dangerous situation and in fact
we define falling very clinically it’s
defined as coming to rest
unintentionally on the ground or a lower
surface and in dance that’s not at all
how we see falling we think falling is
beautiful it’s something we practice
it’s a choreographic choice it’s a skill
falling is walking falling is shifting
your weight it has meaning it’s
beautiful I love hearing Christina talk
about falling as redefining your
relationship with the ground so she
tells students in her community class
that falling is going to happen but
what’s more important than that is can
you become comfortable on the ground
maybe you can even begin thinking of new
ways to get back on your feet
but improvisation can help us to see
that there can be a multiplicity of
responses and not one single
predetermined outcome so what if we were
taught this were advice that we all took
what if we said it’s time for us all to
begin redefining our relationship with the ground
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